Sholto Douglas: preference

Transcript context

…You were mentioning going in on weekends and on Christmas break and the only people in the office are Jeff Dean and Sergey Brin or something and you just get to pair program with them. I don't want to pick on your company in particular, but people at any big company have gotten there because they've gone through a very selective process. They had to compete in high school. They had to compete in college. But it almost seems like they get there and then they take it easy when in fact it's the time to put the pedal to the metal. Go in and pair program with Sergey Brin on the weekends or whatever, you know what I mean? There's pros and cons there, right? I think many people make the decision that the thing that they want to prioritize is a wonderful life with their family. They do wonderful work in the hours that they do and that's incredibly impactful. I think this is true for many people at Google. Maybe they don't work as many hours as in your typical startup mythologies. But the work that they do is incredibly valuable. It's very high-leverage because they know the systems and they're experts in their field. We also need people like that. Our world rests on these huge systems that are difficult to manage and difficult to fix. We need people who are willing to work on, and help, and fix, and maintain those in frankly a thankless way. That isn't as high publicity as all of this AI work that we're doing. I am ridiculously grateful that those people do that. I'm also happy that there are people that find technical fulfillment in their job and doing that well and also maybe they draw a lot more out of spending a lot of hours with their family. I'm lucky that I'm at a stage in my life where I can go in and work every hour of the week. I'm not making as many sacrifices to do that. One example sticks out in my mind of this sort getting to the yes on the other side of a no. Basically every single high-profile guest I've done so far, I think maybe with one or two exceptions, I've sat down for a week and I've just come up with a list of sample questions. I just try to come up with really smart questions to send to them. In that entire process I've always thought, if I just cold email them, it's like a 2% chance they say yes. If I include this list, there's a 10% chance. Because otherwise, you go through their inbox and every 34 seconds, there's an interview for some podcast or interview. Every single time I've done this they've said yes.…

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